One of the biggest announcement is the Xbox LIVE integration with Windows Phone 7. With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft is stream lining game development on the phone, desktop and Xbox. The idea is to make available a common library that makes it easy for developers code games for either of the platforms.

Before I talk about developing the games, I’ll talk about submitting a game to the Marketplace. Microsoft has a program called Xbox Game Publisher where companies are registered as game providers, obviously this registration comes at a cost.

For Windows Phone 7, Microsoft will allow developers who aren’t registered Xbox Publishers to submit their games to the market. There’s a catch though, well two actually:

The Xbox LIVE integration will allow developers access the following features:

Gamer tag

Achievements

Leaderboards

Trial Mode

We’ve seen the demo showing a game being started on the PC, continued on the WP7 device and completed on the Xbox 360. For this the game must be coded using the Reach profile in XNA’s framework. XNA Framework has two profiles for game development:

Inputs for games across different platforms is quite easy to configure sing the Cross-Platform Input API allowing you configure Xbox 360 controllers, WP7 devices and desktop keyboards. The Touch API allows for 4 input points on the Windows Phone devices and Windows, these points are both orientation an resolution aware.

One good thing for developers is that rotation and scale changes are handled automatically and from what I understand don’t require any extra coding effort. At the same time talking about effects, there are 5 predefined ones that can be used. No custom effects available. The ones that can be used are:

Talking about media within games, developers have the following options:

API to play back WAV data

Modify pitch, volume, pan audio

Ability to play synthesized/buffered audio

Ability to play songs from URI/URL

Image editing, publishing (screen shots perhaps?)

Standard Video API

As for the sensors, location, Vibration alert and Accelerometer are available for the developers.

Disclaimer: The information comes from a Microsoft slide deck and is subject to change.